This invention pertains to the field of personally worn ornamental jewelry, and particularly to such jewelry which is designed to hold a quantity of perfumed material.
The use of essential oils and similar perfumed material in earrings, lockets and other items of personal jewelry is well known in the art. The advantages of such perfumed ornaments are obvious, as they permit the wearer to position a source of fragrance at provocative bodily locations without the need to constantly reapply the perfumed material as it evaporates. However, due to numerous deficiencies in existing designs, this arrangement has not achieved a level of public acceptance sufficient to bring it out of the category of a novelty item.
Presently available perfume carrying ornaments include earrings containing a wad of cotton which may be saturated with perfume by the user. The fragrance then escapes from the perfume saturated cotton to the ambient atmosphere through a perforated backing or similar gas permeable material. The disadvantage to this system is that the wearer is regularly fumbling with bottles of alcohol based perfume, frequently spilling it on the varnished wooden tops of dressing tables and thus marring the finish of the wood. If the user overcomes this obstacle, he or she invariably ends up with perfume saturated fingers which must be rinsed off, thus wasting precious time and costly perfume. More recently, pellets of solid wax-based perfuming agents have been proposed as a means of solving the problems created by saturated cotton swabs. However, these pellets must still be directly handled by the user, and are generally awkward to insert as they become very slippery as soon as exposed to the heat of the user's fingertips.
Another factor which has discouraged widespread acceptance of perfumed jewelry has been the fact that it is not well suited for use with expensive, high quality perfumes. Presently available designs provide a continuous outpouring of fragrance from the moment the perfume is inserted until all of it has evaporated. Since it would be senseless to apply a fresh charge of costly perfume hours before its intended use, the wearer would have to carry such perfume in a separate container so that the perfume could be added to the ornament at the appropriate time. In addition, the user cannot charge the ornament with more perfume than will be needed for one wearing, as the excess could not be stored for later use. This defeats the most useful aspect of perfumed jewelry, which is to provide a source of fragrance on one's person that need not be constantly replenished from an external source.
A further hindrance to the popularity of perfumed jewelry has been the inability of such jewelry to accommodate widely varying strengths of fragrance as well as differences in personal preference for providing a desired fragrance strength. Since the prior art designs do not contain any means for adjusting the rate at which a fragrance escapes from the perfumed material, the user cannot compensate for unusually strong or delicate fragrances. These ornaments are thus severely limited in their application, due to the wide range of personal preferences for a desired level of fragrance strength.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an easily refillable perfumed jewelry ornament in which the user may insert a fresh charge of fragrance without physically contacting the perfumed material.
It is another object of this invention to provide a perfumed jewelry ornament which can repeatedly store perfume until ready for use and then readily be converted to emit the fragrance therein.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a means for adjusting the relative level of fragrance strength which is emitted from an article of jewelry.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide the above objects in a compact, economical and easy to use structure.
It is feature of this invention that perfume is permanently stored in a discreet disposable cartridge adapted for placement in an article of jewelry.
It is another feature of the invention that the escape of fragrance from an article of jewelry can be turned on or off to conserve the perfumed material therein.
It is a further feature of this invention that the rate of escape of a fragrance from perfumed material in an article of jewelry can be adjusted to provide a range of fragrance strengths suitable to the chosen perfume and to the wearer's taste.